It isn't all that surprising, just odd that the GOP field couldn't get their act together. Odd. It's not like they didn't know the election was coming and that Obama had much to lose (and plenty of reason, for some, to lose it!)

I can't help but wonder who the eventual candidate will choose for a running mate. Unless he does something colossally stupid (like choose Palin again, or Bachmann, or Santorum...), there is every chance the VP candidate could be better than the candidate himself! Embarrassing.

I'd rather have someone that understand how to make a budget work than someone that just digs us further in the hole.
At least from a business sense Mitt is the perfect choice. He knows the loop holes and therefore will understand how to close them.

You know if a really good candidate runs 3rd party at this point, they might have a fighting chance against the current crop of candidates. I mean, I think Obama isn't too bad honestly, but I would like someone who could crack a few more heads then he does when it comes to getting some legislation through. The healthcare reform bill kinda sucked, probably not for the same reasons Ranger thinks it sucks, but still. ;)

So who would you rather have instead of the Mittens ? The New-wife-a-thron ? That would be even worse IMO.
The only borderline passable candidate in the whole republican field is Ron Paul, and he's certainly not getting nominated, plus he would be crushed if he ran as an independent.

So why not vote Obama anyway ? He took a country on the verge of collapse and made it only stumble instead of fall flat on its face, he is not almost universally hated by the rest of the world even if he was fairly combative and so on and so forth.

Would it be THAT bad to vote Obama anyway ?
He's not even an actual democrat really, he's a centrist who just happened to run with the support of the democratic party.

He's not even an actual democrat really, he's a centrist who just happened to run with the support of the democratic party.

He is by far the most liberal president in my generation. And he breaks the constitution when he feels like it. IE, the appointments of the head of the new consumer protection bureau and the 3 people to the NLRB were all made unconstitutionally.

Shoving Obamacare through without 1 Republican vote is yet another example of his extreme left tilt. Continuing to scream about the "rich" having to pay more taxes is a classic liberal line.

His latest liberal song is the new Health Care rules saying religious businesses have to have their medical insurances pay for abortive medicines and birth control. Against their faith. Which is stunning given the Supreme Courts 9-0 rebuke of him on the ministerial exception case just recently decided.

Scandals such as Fast and Furious taint his presidency just as bad as any I can remember.

So who would you rather have instead of the Mittens ?

Newt or Rick would be far far more conservative than Mittens.

He took a country on the verge of collapse and made it only stumble instead of fall flat on its face, he is not almost universally hated by the rest of the world even if he was fairly combative and so on and so forth.

Or one can look at past recoveries like the Reagan recovery and see 7+% quarterly GDP growths vs the anemic 2-3% from Obama.

One can say "He took a country on the verge of collapse and made it stumble instead run towards recovery." Which is how I see it. Saying time and time again that you want businesses to pay more tax does not instill confidence and spur the economy towards positive growth.

First off, we're in this deep global-wide doodoo because "somebody" decided more than half a century ago that the entire world should just abandon the gold standard because, hey, that somebody got greedy and nobody slapped its hands, then they kept not slapping it ever since.
Sure, we had a lot of other things piling up, especially the back-asswards decision to let banks do this fractional reserve banking nonsense, to contribute to the clustershag, but that one before all that was the trigger point for everything.
Sadly, now it's a bit late to go back on it, because the monetary system is so out of whack with reality that you just can't put THAT genie back into the bottle.

Also, what good would cutting taxes do anyway ?
You just can't win an economic fight with China and other such places.
Even if taxes for companies would be ZERO (yes, you read that right, no taxes at all), do you honestly think they would bring back jobs at home ? Which USA citizen will ever work for a paltry 50 cents an hour again ?

You speak of Reagan's days and constant percentage GDP growth.
This "constant percentage GDP increase" is in itself unsustainable without ever-faster-evolving technology efficiency for ANY country, but in particular for the USA, where the government has decided to CUT spending on infrastructure, education and other LONG-TERM INVESTMENTS in favour of... of what exactly again ? Ah, yes, stuff like military spending, inefficient profit-oriented healthcare and other such non-ling-term-sustainable initiatives.
In the times of Reagan, the puss-filled boil on the foot that is the rotten core of the so-called "american dream" of living the life without paying the price was relatively tiny and fresh, now it's pretty much about to go into fullblown gangrene, and no USofA president will ever admit that the lower foot has to go get chopped off for the rest to survive until it's way too late to save a workable stump from it.

The USA has been living far, FAR above its means for about half a century, spending money on ridiculous bling and neglecting to make house repairs and pay for their kids' tuition, so to speak.
Now the reality check has bounced, and the best you can do is to keep making minimum payments for a very long time while struggling.
The USA is pretty much done and gone as the number one economic power in the world, China is coming like a juggernaut and there's no chance to stop it without becoming it first, socio-economically speaking.
But you wouldn't really want to do that anyway, would you ?

I, for one, welcome our new Chinese overlords, about a decade or two in advance. [/snark]

The only reason the Chinese do so well right now is that their government can tell 3 million people to go dig a ditch for 1 dollar a day and they do it, on threat of death.

They don't even need to directly threaten anybody anymore.
All they need to do is keep independent worker unions outlawed - and by the way, that's the exact thing they do now, and it's the EXACT OPPOSITE of communism, whose main ideal was "power to the workers" (and unions were as good as mandatory).
Sure, they do have some "official" unions, but those are controlled by the "party" and pretty much do whatever the employer deems to be borderline tolerable for the workers but nothing more. In fact, the official unions do more harm than good to the actual employees.
What China is right now it's a HYPERcapitalist country, the likes of which you've only seen before in dystopian sci-fi novels. The only link of the Chinese "communist" party with communism is the name, nothing else, not even a shred.
So, no need to threaten anybody with death from the government level - those are the going labor rates, it's an employer's market, there's no shortage of labor at those rock-bottom prices.
Get paid that pathetic salary or go starve. The choice is pretty clear for most. And there's more than a billion of'em anyway.

this has to be one of the funniest things i have heard you say yet, thanks for the laugh.

Wow, I have no idea that was even remotely funny. It is as true and as sickening a statement I have ever made.

We can get into why if you want. However to take my statement as a joke is rather insulting. To not be able to even see the other side on the Obamacare debate is certainly something I would never have thought of you Dude. I had, to now, thought you were center/slightly to the left, yet willing to listen/read all points of view before deciding.

That vote was in November 2009. It was a preliminary vote on Obamacare not the final one. Mr Cao was on congressman from a heavily Democratic district. IIRC it was the one where the past person was found with 50k in his freezer as a bride of some sort.

At that time, everyone knew this vote would go nowhere in the Senate and Cao voted yes because he, at the time was worried about his seat (which is lost in 2010).

On the final vote, which occurred in March no Republicans, including Cao, voted yes.

Shoving Obamacare through without 1 Republican vote is yet another example of his extreme left tilt.

i found it funny for several reasons, all tied to your phrasing, not the legislation:

it sounds like you are saying that the manner in which he passed it rather than the content of the legislation made him so liberal. that is funny to me because i was wondering if that makes the republican presidents who have done the same liberals by that reasoning?

i also found it funny because if one republican had of voted for it, by your phrasing then it wouldn't have been liberal any longer?

it really just came out that you seemed more upset about the manner in which it was passed rather than the actual legislation, which i know is not the case but it tickled my funny bone nonetheless.

as far as the legislation, my main problem with the whole process as i have said before is that if the republicans wanted more of a say in the process, they had ample opportunity to take this on since president clinton first attempted a fix.

they likely chose not to do it as no matter what was done it was bound to anger some part of their constituent base. it was much more convenient for them to wait until someone else took it on, try to obstruct the process as much as possible and then rail against it as bad legislation if it works out to be bad for the country.

i have a feeling that the republican law-makers are exactly where they wanted to be on this one and that was likely by design and choice of inaction.

Why is it I am getting the impression that simple majority votes in a two party system can be unsatisfying?

Incidentally, even if all Democrats had voted against the 2001 Bush Tax cuts they still would have passed. The fact that 6% of Democratic Congressmen voted for it is functionally irrelevant from the perspective of how laws pass in the US, as is the number of Republican's who did or did not vote for Obamacare.

so you are more upset about the way it was done rather than the legislation itself?

I am most upset at the legislation itself.

The problem with the way it was passed is multifold.

It is the only entitlement that was not passed with both parties in favor.

It was passed by reconciliation so the exact Senate bill had to be used. Things like the CLASS act was passed over objections by Republicans and we see how that turned out. Many other features of the bill are still being found out.

Anytime a bill has to be passed "so we can find out what is in it" (per Pelosi), it should never be voted on.

Another example a new mandate requiring the Catholic Church and other religious groups ﾓto buy contraception-related health insurance for employees at their hospitals, universities and charity groups, or pay heavy fines.

This would have been unheard of without all the new power given to the Dept of Health in Obamacare.

Some consumer organizations, such as Consumers Union, and many medical organizations, such as the American Public Health Association, oppose HSAs because, in their opinion, they benefit only healthy, younger people and make the health care system more expensive for everyone else. According to Stanford economist Victor Fuchs, "The main effect of putting more of it on the consumer is to reduce the social redistributive element of insurance."[21]

Critics contend that low-income people, who are more likely to be uninsured, do not earn enough to benefit from the tax breaks offered by HSAs. These tax breaks are too modest, when compared to the actual cost of insurance, to persuade significant numbers to buy this coverage.[22]

One industry study matched HSA account holders to the neighborhood income ("neighborhood" was defined as their census tract from the 2000 Census) and found that 3% of account holders lived in "low-income" neighborhoods (median incomes below $25,000 in 1999 dollars), 46% lived in lower-middle-income neighborhoods (median incomes between $25,000 and $50,000), 34% lived in middle-income neighborhoods (median incomes between $50,000 and $75,000), 12% lived in upper-income neighborhoods (median incomes between $75,000 and $100,000) and 5% lived in higher income neighborhoods (median incomes above $100,000).[23]

In testimony before the US Senate Finance Committee's Subcommittee on Health in 2006, advocacy group Commonwealth Fund said that all evidence to date shows that health savings accounts and high-deductible health plans worsen, rather than improve, the US health system's problems.[24]

HSA funds that are not held in savings accounts insured by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation are subject to market risk, as is any other investment. While the potential upside from investment gains can be viewed as a benefit, the subsequent downside, as well as the possibility of capital loss, may make the HSA a poor option for some.[25]

----------------------------------------------------

I would like to see a rebuttal to this without any attacks or hostility.

The premium for an HDHP generally is less than the premium for traditional health insurance. A higher deductible lowers the premium because the insurance company no longer pays for routine healthcare, and insurance underwriters believe that Americans who see a relationship between medical cost and their bank accounts will consume less medical care, shop for lower-cost options, and be more vigilant against excess and fraud in the health care industry. Introducing consumer-driven supply and demand and controlling inflation in health care and health insurance were among the government's goals in establishing these plans.

With HSAs, in catastrophic situations, the maximum out-of-pocket expense liability can be less than that of a traditional health plan. This is because a qualified HDHP can cover 100% after the deductible, involving no coinsurance.

HSAs also give the flexibility not available in some traditional health plans to pay on a pretax basis for qualified medical expenses not covered in standard or HSA insurance plans, which may include dental, orthodontic, vision, and other approved expenses.[17][18]

HSA accounts also have an advantage over Flexible Spending Accounts since deposits are not necessarily tied to expenses in a particular plan or calendar year. They are automatically rolled over for future medical expenses or may be used to reimburse qualified expenses from prior years as long as the expense was qualified under an HSA plan at the time that the expense was incurred.[19]

Over time, if medical expenses are low and contributions are made regularly to the HSA, the account can accumulate significant assets that can be used for health care tax free or used for retirement on a tax-deferred basis.

A recent industry survey found that in July 2007 over 80% of HSA plans provided first-dollar coverage for preventive care. This was true of virtually all HSA plans offered by large employers and over 95% of the plans offered by small employers. It was also true of over half (59%) of the plans which were purchased by individuals.

Both Malpractice reform and increased usage of HSA have been on the Republican's plate for a long time.

The trial lawyers lobby is just too powerful to accomplish the first. I am not sure why the 2nd has not been advocated other than my thoughts on Democrats wanting more central (government) planning and less freedom for the individual to choose. It seems they do not thing the public can make informed decisions.

I see with this and your next post about what Democrats are "wanting more" of that you're far more interested in poking the tiger than in providing real answers or having a civilized conversation.

I figured a man in your position would be willing to directly address the criticisms I quoted. I figured that, as a doctor, you would be best equipped to refute these points directly. Not sure why I expected better out of you this time, but for some reason I did. Silly me.

I do not wish to provide new anything. You misunderstand my intentions entirely. This was not my attempt at a "take that!" or an attack on HSAs. I presented the arguments that I heard against HSAs, quoted from Wiki because I'm sure as heck not going to word it any better, and asked for someone I thought could give me an honest and direct rebuttal. As the resident conservative, and a doctor, I thought you would be willing to provide one.

Was different from the HSA, answered to why it didn't pass, made the reps look almost human, and I didn't offer an opinion. What's your deal?

The Democrats believe you cannot know what is good for you so anything that puts more power with the people instead of the government is bad.

The joke is you knowing the beliefs of the more diverse opposition. That said, Obamacare is a clusterburp, the not all reps love living-death camps in the ER, and you still pout at the truth. If you are free to assume from the kettle then so am I.

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